400 ENGLISH FIELD SYSTEMS 



certainly was, since parcels belonging to the same tenement are 

 often widely separated in the field-book's enumeration. The date 

 at which the tenementa were in the hands of the tenants whose 

 names they came to bear is determined by the extent. Since this 

 document is cast in the usual thirteenth-century form, and since 

 in 8 Henry IV a parcel of a tenement was still occasionally in the 

 hands of a descendant of the original holder/ the extent undoubt- 

 edly belongs to the thirteenth century. What we see, then, at 

 Ewell are thirteenth-century tenementa, very much like those 

 of Norfolk, bearing the names of contemporary Kentish units. 

 As in Kent, too, the subdivisions of the rood at Ewell were known 

 as " day works." ^ Thus, the Ewell field arrangements, repro- 

 duced probably in many Surrey townships, become a connecting 

 link between the East Anghan and Kentish systems. 



Essex as well as Surrey shows East Anglian and Kentish anal- 

 ogies. Its " terra " and unnamed unit of villein tenure were 

 East Anglian; its '' day's work," a unit of measure often used 

 was Kentish, and there were of course Kentish counterparts for 

 the consoHdated or nearly consolidated virgates of Essex. Ex- 

 cept for the northwestern part of the county, deviation from the 

 original Kentish system was less than in East Anglia or in Surrey. 

 Especially are the compact holdings of Essex noteworthy. Al- 

 though we have no evidence that these were rectangular blocks, 

 as were the Gillingham iuga, nevertheless the descriptions of 

 xirgates at Barking are not unlike those of iuga at Newchurch 

 and especially at Wye. Only the name differed; whereas at 

 Wye the virgate was the fourth part of the iugum, in Essex it 

 was, for purposes of estimate, the fourth part of the hide. Units 

 so essentially alike in aspect seem to assure us that the system 

 prevalent in Kent extended to the north of the Thames. 



It is doubtful whether the northwestern corner of Essex should 

 be included in the above generalization. Much more open field 

 was to be found there than in the rest of the county, and the 

 terriers of holdings are very much hke those of Hertfordshire in 



* " I acra quam tenet Petrus Saleman de tenemento suo." One of the iuga 

 of the extent was held by Johannes Saleman. Register of Ewell, pp. 34, 141. 

 2 Ibid., p. 159. 



